Victories and Defeats

What a strange day. The first half involved work, the second a party, but they all unfortunately lent some sort of stress to me.

So I have been helping our NY office with a new business pitch - super cool! Since all the planners have been out, I was coordinating everything. This proved a little tricky as I had not done it before and of course wanted to get everything right.

Today were two focus groups: I scheduled my director as moderator, requested food and drinks, reserved video equipment, found an AS person to videotape, recruited for it by sending personal e-mails (because the first recruiting attempt failed) to about 25 people and scheduling based on responses (that turned out to be a little crazy as it was so last minute), prepared materials for the group such as flash cards and a flip chart, handed over the discussion guide I modified and also took notes and jotted down quotes. Whew! It was a lot to do and took me a considerable amount of time to put together.

I feel that I got really stressed out during the entire process and I'm a little disappointed in myself. I would be grooving along getting things done but I would pause for just a second and the stress would kind of seep in. I have dealt with many stressful things before and have become better at getting my work done despite it. Perhaps it's because it's so new, but I feel like I didn't do as well because I didn't handle the stress very well. Perhaps it's all in my head and I didn't appear quite as stressed as I thought I was.

My director asked me if I would like to moderate the second group right before the first group started and it made me really nervous. I have of course beaten the path and done interviews, etc. in grad school but I think that my mental state led me straight to panic when she asked. I do want to know how to moderate well but I don't necessarily just want to be thrown in on this one. I have been thrown into a lot at work lately and I think I have done very well, but something about this threw me off. I didn't feel that I could do it. I also felt that I wanted to do moderating the right way and I know that learning the basics could definitely help avoid common errors. I asked another planner if she would help me out. This also allowed me to pay more attention to the second group and actually have some takeaways to present to NY when I sent my notes to them...but I was still disappointed in myself. It made me realize that this is why I'm a junior right now and that I still have a lot to learn.

"Just a junior": I have not felt this way at work even once before. I have always felt like a valued member of the team and someone that can be counted on. I have felt welcomed and celebrated. But I did feel it today and it sucked. I didn't want to feel like that because I want to prove myself. But I think it's important to have this junior time to learn - as much as you can ever learn in school, there's still experience that you need. You can never get this in school, I don't believe, no matter how much you try. I had 5 internships, both client side and agency, went to grad school, and I still have a lot to learn. I will always have things to learn but they won't always be the basics as they are now.

So I'm trying, but I realized I'm not there yet.

Now the party portion of the day - today was our annual meeting and agency party. I had already heard a lot about it and so was pretty excited to see what was in store. Everyone is fun, was having fun together, and it was a really good party.

But at one point, far into the party, I stopped dancing to get some water and was just watching everyone have fun and dance. I thought about a few things. For one, I had been a little intimidated by the dancers because they're really good! That is a weird feeling to me because usually the dance floor is one of the places I feel most comfortable. This could be explained by my shyness when I first meet people - sometimes it hinders me from being as outgoing - but I felt like I should be able to open up, and everyone else was being so fun. So I continued watching and realized that I thought everyone knew each other much more than I knew them. True, but it really shouldn't have scared me away as the group is just plain welcoming. Basically, rational thought had flown out the door and I was just becoming sad.

I thought about not knowing people well, not knowing a lot of people in Dallas in general, and being a bit lonely. This wasn't even about missing specific people, it was about not being quite settled yet. This is all part of moving to a new city or starting something new, but it just kind of caught me off guard in the midst of all this excitement.

Fortunately, one of my coworkers came soon after these thoughts started bubbling up and chatted with me for a few minutes. Before I knew it, she was pulling me out to the dance floor and the fun began again.

But it was definitely a strange day of certain victories and defeats.